


Getting To Know You

by tielan



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Professors, Alternate Universe High School, Attraction, F/M, Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,369
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1413790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve makes friends with Romanoff when she greets him on the first day. He feels comfortable exchanging polite nods of respectful acknowledgement with Barton after the Math teacher takes him through a set of calculations for a diagram that’s as much about visual graphical balance as it is about colour and motion and design. He takes to Banner after the biology teacher manages to get Stark off Steve’s case with fairly clever distraction techniques.</p><p>But he doesn’t notice Maria.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Getting To Know You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PhynixCaskey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhynixCaskey/gifts), [theladyscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theladyscribe/gifts).



> I think I got assigned this story because the recipient asked for "Marvel Cinematic Universe - Any Pairing" and I wasn't matchable with anyone else in the challenge. This pairing is probably not what you were expecting or hoping for, but I noticed you liked high school AUs, and I'm hoping that this will be okay!

Steve doesn't notice Maria Hill at first.

He makes friends with Romanoff when she greets him on the first day. He feels comfortable exchanging polite nods of respectful acknowledgement with Barton after the Math teacher takes him through a set of calculations for a diagram that’s as much about graphical balance as it is about colour and motion and design. He takes to Banner after the biology teacher manages to get Stark off Steve’s case with fairly clever distraction techniques.

Besides, there's just too much going on, what with the move and the new school, the students and the classes, and the situation with Vice-Principal Coulson and the hit-and-run ‘accident’ that leaves him in a coma...

The History teacher is met and noted, but not on his radar. Not until two of his students trail in late, arguing from their previous class.

"…like, totally amazing, if you ask me," says Winnie.

"Who's asking you?" Michael snorts. "Besides, I think it's just feminist propaganda. Women don't fight in wars."

"That's bullshit," Aletia pipes up from the back. "My cousin served in Afghanistan."

"My aunt served in _Iraq,_ " someone else says, further back. "And that was, like, forever ago."

"Yeah, but I bet she wasn't in a _fighting_ position," Michael says, holding his ground and – incidentally – digging his own grave.

"Actually," Steve says, mildly, at once feeling like he should call the class to order and yet knowing a little bit about this subject, "women have frequently served in fighting positions throughout human history. It's just not very well documented or publicised."

Winnie flounces to her seat. "See?"

Michael scowls. "My brother James says that it's all just political correctness gone crazy."

"It's not politically correct if it's the _truth_ ," Winnie looks at Michael like he's a particularly pestilent kind of insect – one that needs squashing straight away. "And those Russian women in World War II were _real._ "

Steve blinks, surprised. "The flying aces," he asks, "or the snipers?" There's a moment when the kids stare at him, mouths open at the idea that he knows something other than art and lines and paint and clay. "Never mind. Get your sketchbooks out. Today we're doing still life."

There are grumbles, but he handles them. It's always a delicate balance getting the kids into a frame of mind that will let them be creative, while still focusing them enough. They're not bad kids, just restless, with a little too much energy and a little too clever for their own good.

Too clever for his own good was never one of Steve's traits. Neither was curiosity.

Usually.

"Who was teaching your last class?"

Winnie looks up from packing her books. "Ms. Hill," she says. "My sister said she's good. She makes things interesting. And relevant. Even if it is all dead people."

Steve watches her go and shakes his head. 'All dead people.' His gramps would be horrified to think that he counted as ‘dead people’.

He hasn’t really spoken to Maria Hill. A nod of the head when passing in the corridor, but she always looks like she has somewhere to be and if you get in her way then her boots were _definitely_ made for walking all over you. And she has really good taste in boots. And really good legs.

Okay, so maybe Steve _has_ noticed her. Or, at least, noticed her legs.

The realisation isn’t exactly a comfortable one. He’s been pretty critical of Stark for ogling the women around the place, so it’s not nice to realise he’s doing exactly the same thing.

And, as it would turn out, when he gets to the communal staff room later that day, Maria Hill is sitting at one of the tables with several books spread out around her, making lesson plans. In a pair of shiny black boots with leather cross-straps that echo the leather belt she's wearing trimly around her waist.

Steve pauses by the table, and picks the nearest one up. “ _Wings, Women, and War,_ ” he reads out loud. “Not what I’d expect for high school history.”

“I start with the odd and unusual,” she says without looking up from her notes. “It piques their interest before they settle down to the routine, and gets them accustomed to the idea that the things they know are not all that there is to know.”

“So do you talk about the flying aces, or the snipers?” Steve asks, and bites back a smile as her head lifts slowly, her gaze flat and disbelieving beneath eyelashes that would give Snuffleupagus a run for his money. “And why the Russian women? Why not the WASPs who flew military aircraft during the war?”

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a war historian, Rogers.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”

“Clearly.” She blinks at him for a few seconds more, before she seems to come to a decision about him. “I talk about the Russian women both because they were in combat and were attributed kills, and because Russia acknowledged their military service – as America failed to acknowledge the service of the WASPs for thirty-five years. And because it opens their minds to the idea that history is many things, that what they think is the truth is usually only part of it, and that good things can happen elsewhere – even under questionable regimes and in countries whose politics are at odds with our own.”

Steve is...impressed. Because this isn’t anything he’d expected when he came here to Stan Lee High. It’s a whole new level of thought – and one that assumes a great deal of maturity about her students. Then again, with the praise of kids like Winnie’s sister, maybe treating them as though they can take unusual political thought isn’t such a bad thing.

“You really like challenging your students, don’t you?”

“Of course. Don’t we all?”

It’s hard not to smile. She makes it sound like _not_ wanting to challenge her students is a cardinal sin.

“Did I say something funny?”

“Kind of. I was just thinking my gramps would like you. My gran was a WAAF with the British in World War II and he was with the Air Corps. They met in Europe during the war.”

“Hence your knowledge about the WASPs and the Russian snipers.” She sits back in her chair with a smile hovering about her mouth. “You’re not what I expected, Rogers.”

“Should I ask what did you expect?”

“An arty-farty guy,” she admits. “Not someone built like a football stud, who knows about women in World War II.”

Steve blinks. Maria blushes.

“Football stud?”

She sighs, her lips pursing. “You _are_ built like a football coach’s wet dream.”

“Stud?”

Her ears are pink. So is the long line of her neck as it slides into the prim, pressed collar of her shirt. “A slip of the tongue.”

Steve tries not to smile. It’s not that much more successful than he was the first time. “I don’t mind if you slipped...” His brain manages to get a warning signal hoisted, although not quite fast enough. Now it’s his turn to blush. “I wasn’t about to say that.”

“No,” she agrees. “You weren’t. What are you doing here, anyway?”

He displays the album of photographs and flips a few pages past her. “I was going to take a quiet moment to go through this.”

Maria half-reaches for it, her eyes widening. “Are those Da Vinci sketches--? The 'lost notebook'?”

“That’s what it looks like.” Steve grins at her sudden wide-eyed interest. “You know, I didn’t expect someone who looks like a magazine covergirl to be knowledgeable about Da Vinci's 'lost notebook'.”

He receives a deadly look for his comment, but can’t stop smiling as he sits down opposite her on the table and offers her the album. It’s worth it to see her hesitate and look him in the eye before she takes the book from his hand and starts carefully studying the photographs with all the avidity of a collector – or a historian.

Steve grins at the way she ignores him _._ He may not have noticed Maria Hill at first, but he’s pretty sure he’s going to like getting to know her better.


End file.
